Product Details

• Actors: Alfredo Kraus, Alain Guingal
• Format: Classical, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: French
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Bel Canto Society
• VHS Release Date: October 7, 1997
• Run Time: 143 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000003YF5
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #450,030 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Confusing Romeo & Juliet. The cover shows one tenor, the cast has another, September 26, 2007

By 

M. Durham "andiam" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Charles Gounod: Romeo et Juliette [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I happen to have an old video of this performance -- if the performance is the one with Neil Shicoff and Barbara Hendricks, staged at the Paris Opera c. 1988. Mine was a copy taken from French TV and French TV is a different animal from that we're used to in the States. It doesn't translate well; it is soft looking and the camera work is done by snails.

But that to one side, the illustraion beside the title on this page, is for a different performance, which featured a different tenor: Alfredo Kraus. So what I think of this performance is that I don't know which one they really mean to offer for sale. Alfredo Kraus, IMO, was an elegant singer with a wirey, verging on unpleasant sound, while Neil Shicoff was, and is, a talented wild card of a tenor, who can be stunning, or else make you want to kill him. If this video is taken from the Paris performance with Shicoff, then he did himself very well in it, and made a most handsome and passionate Romeo.

The picture is dark, due to the decision of the people who designed the sets, the lighting, and the costumes, that the whole thing should be done in navy blue and black. It opens with a birthday party for the fair Juliet, and features a table about large enough to play football on, with hundreds of empty crystal glasses, and being ignored by people who are obviously not expecting to have any fun that night.

The finale features an almost equally enormous marble, raised tomb upon which the lovers linger so long in dying you begin to hope they will forego death for one last spot of passion. Barbara Hendricks is exquisite in voice and figure, and I don't know why she didn't sing more in her native country.

I'm debating with myself on how cheated I will feel if this video turns out to be the one with Alfredo Kraus.